It has long been known that semiconductor materials such as silicon and germanium exhibit the piezoelectric effect (mechanical stress-induced changes in electrical resistance). See for example C. S. Smith, “Piezoresistance effect in germanium and silicon”, Phys. Rev., vol. 94, pp. 42-49 (1954), incorporated by reference herein. The piezoelectric effect has formed the basis for certain kinds of pressure sensors and strain gauges, but only recently has it received attention in the manufacture of integrated circuits. In integrated circuit fabrication, one of the major sources of mechanical stress is the differential expansion and contraction of the different materials used. For example, typical fabrication technologies involve electrically isolating the active regions of groups of one or more transistor by surrounding them with shallow trench isolation (STI) regions which are etched into the silicon and then filled with an insulator, such as an oxide. During cooling, oxides tend to shrink less than the surrounding silicon, and therefore develop a state of compressive stress laterally on the silicon regions of the device. Of significance is the stress exerted by the STI regions on the silicon forming a Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor (MOSFET) channel, because the piezoelectric impact of such stress can affect carrier mobility, and therefore current flow through the channel (Ion). In general, the higher the electron mobility in the channel, the faster the transistor switching speed.
The stress exerted on a region of silicon decays rapidly as a function of distance from the stress-causing interfaces. In the past, therefore, while process technologies could not produce today's extremely narrow channel widths, the stress-induced impact on performance could be ignored because only the edges of the diffusion region (adjacent to the STI regions) were affected. The channel regions were too far away from the STI regions to exhibit any significant effect. As process technologies have continued to shrink, however, the piezoelectric effect on transistor performance is no longer negligible.
Technology Computer Aided Design (TCAD) models are frequently used to model the behavior of integrated circuit devices at the level of individual transistors. Behaviors characterized at this level can be fed back to improve the circuit layout or the fabrication process, or they can be used to derive circuit level parameters (e.g. SPICE parameters) of the device for subsequent analysis of the circuit at macroscopic levels. TCAD analysis has long been able to take stress effects into account, but only by performing 3-dimensional finite element analysis of a single transistor or a small fragment of the chip. The computation time required to obtain accurate results, however, limited the utility of this kind of analysis to only small regions of a chip layout that include only several transistors. For example, it has not been practical to perform a TCAD analysis to obtain reasonably accurate circuit level parameters for layout regions larger than about a dozen transistors, or about 2-3 diffusion regions. Even then, huge amounts of CPU time, up to several hours per transistor, were required to obtain reasonably accurate results. The required computation time makes this approach prohibitively expensive for any large fragments of the chip layout.
Recently, a simplified model was developed for approximating stress effects on electron and hole mobilities. See R. A. Bianchi et al., “Accurate Modeling of Trench Isolation Induced Mechanical Stress Effects on MOSFET Electrical Performance,” IEEE IEDM Tech. Digest, pp. 117 120 (December 2002), and U.S. Patent Publication No. 2002/0173588 (2003), both incorporated herein by reference. A variation of this model, with some additional fitting terms and parameters, was incorporated into Revision 4.3.0 of the Berkeley BSIM standard model. See Xuemei (Jane) Xi, et al., “BSIM4.3.0 Model, Enhancements and Improvements Relative to BSIM4.2.1”; University of California at Berkeley (2003), available online, incorporated by reference herein. The model is known as the Length of Diffusion (LOD) model, since its primary parameter is the length of the diffusion region on each side of the channel of a transistor under study. Roughly, the model analyzes the layout to find the LOD at different segments along the width of the channel, calculates a weighted average LOD for the entire channel width, calculates a stress based on the weighted average LOD, and then converts that stress value to a change in mobility.
There are a number of problems with the LOD model. First, the model is limited to STI-induced stress. It therefore ignores many other potential sources of stress. For example, some integrated circuit manufacturers form SiGe in the source and drain areas of a p-channel transistor intentionally to induce certain stresses on the channel; this source of stress is not taken into account in the LOD model, nor are stresses induced by differential coefficients of expansion of superposing layers. Additionally, several semiconductor manufacturers use strained cap layers covering the transistors on top of the gate stacks. It is typical to use tensile nitride cap layers for n-channel transistors and compressive nitride cap layers for p-channel transistors. Some other potential stress sources include tensile STI that is beneficial for both n-channel and p-channel transistors and tensile Si:C (carbon-doped silicon) in the source/drain of the n-channel transistors. None of these stress sources are taken into account by the LOD methodology.
Second, the LOD model fails to take into account stresses that might be present transversely to the length of diffusion, across the channel width-wise. It has been discovered that compressive stress in this direction can affect carrier mobility in the channel in significant and surprising ways.
Third, more generally than the second deficiency, since the LOD model considers only hydrostatic pressure, which is a sum of all normal (i.e. volume changing rather than rotational) stress components, it fails to take into account differing vector stress components. Different stress components relative to the channel direction are known to affect carrier mobility differently.
Fourth, the LOD model fails to take into account the presence of other structures in the neighborhood of a region under study, apart from the nearest STI interface. Other structures beyond this interface might reduce the amount of oxide presumed to be exerting a force, and therefore might reduce the actual stress in the channel.
Accordingly, it would be extremely desirable to provide a stress analysis method that approximates the stresses in a region of an integrated circuit chip, more accurately than does the LOD model, and without incurring the computation costs of a 3-dimensional finite element analysis. Such a method can enable stress analysis of much larger regions of the circuit, including of an entire integrated circuit chip.